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Dementia-OMO
Freak of Internet Gaming
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 Posted - May 12 2006 : 19:38:17
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I bought my wife a new computer because she fried her old one's motherboard.. I salvaged the new memory i bought her and put that in the new one and I also took her Hard Drive out of the old one and bought an inexpensive raided Pci slot plugged it in and the computer recognises both hard disks now..
here's my problem...
I'd like to be able to either
A) just create new shortcuts on her desktop and access those program files the same as if she was on her old computer..
or
b) migrate ALL of the info off her old Hard Disk to the new one..
whichever is easier..
Old one = 40 gig
New one = 200 gig
in writing this I'm realizing that if i do get the programs to work for her such as Office with her outlook and Quicken etc.. that the files would probably be written to her old drive as well.. and having to reconfigure each program to save to the new drive would be painstaking.
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Country: Antigua and Barbuda
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Petrified-OMO
Taxing Patience
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Posted - May 12 2006 : 20:46:28
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Copy it over.
Then use the 40gig drive as bulk storage or even partition it for dedicated swap memory.
That is what I would do.
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Country: USA
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Stingray
frequent visitor
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 Posted - May 12 2006 : 21:42:06
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Her old programs will not work on the new computer unless they are freshly installed. Even though the old HD has her programs, they are useless now. The data files should be okay though.
Install the programs on her new computer which will by default install on the new HD. Retrieve the data file and save them where you'd like.
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medicated
frequent visitor
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 03:22:46
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I recently replaced a motherboard on a AMD 1800+ machine with A64 Sempron socket 754 motherboard. I figured everything would have to be reinstalled too. Upon firing up the system I missed the option to hit delete as it started up. I turned around to see Windows XP starting and figured what the heck, let's see what happens.... Windows started, went straight to loading drivers "Windows has found new hardware" I think it said. 10 min later I was done with the drivers on the CD that came with the new board and catching up on the Windows Updates it had missed while down. After a defrag I was done and took it back to him with all his programs working as they had before. I was amazed that it went so smooth and problem free.
I beleive microsoft has made migration improvements through the Windows Updates over the last year if Im not mistaken.
This was a full mobo swap. Out with the old and in with the new. Simple and sweet.
Give it a shot and see what happens man.
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 Evil is powerless.....if the good are unafraid. (Ronald Regan)
Free speech is intended to protect the controversial and even outrageous word, and not just comforting platitudes too mundane to need protection. - General Colin Powell
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Country: USA
| Posts: 647 |
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Petrified-OMO
Taxing Patience
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 04:25:23
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Hmmm... I don't think I've had any issues migrating from one Hard Drive to another from 98 on up. About the only time I ever re-install is when I want to clean things up.
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Studebaker-OMO
Moderator
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 04:59:15
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As long as you replace the motherboard with the exactly the same motherboard you can plug in the old hard drive and it should work like before. In XP there is a wizard that makes it possible to export much of the user settings from your old setup like desktop icons and even outlook stuff, I don´t remember if you can export all the reg settings for the programs but that might be possible. I prefer new setup where I only backup my mails and adressbook and do a fresh install cause it gets rid of old reg settings which might cause problems. One thing that doesn´t work is just plugging the old hadrive to a complete different motherboard with different chipset, for example from a VIA chipset to a nvidia chipset, you´re asking for trouble if you do such thing. What OS you´re running btw?
regards
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Country: Germany
| Posts: 255 |
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Dementia-OMO
Freak of Internet Gaming
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 06:33:46
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Yeah can't just swap the drive.. although both OSs are Windows XP.
I'll try a reinnstall of the programs and copy data files.. sounds like the best way.
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Country: Antigua and Barbuda
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Catheter-OMO
Man 'O War
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 09:13:18
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If you make the old drive the primary drive and the new drive that came with the computer the secondary drive it should work. You have to boot to the old 40 GB drive so your computer is using the OS and registry from that drive and then you can use the new bigger drive as a storage drive.
You may have to do some driver updates/installs if the new computer has different hardware than the old one which is likely.
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Country: USA
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Dementia-OMO
Freak of Internet Gaming
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 10:48:47
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thanks Cath thought about doing that earlier..
but ended up going the route posted above and its working fine so far as far as reienstalling her old prgrams and migrating just the data from old to new..
I'm now just having a little problem figuring out what the ext is for the Microsoft Office Word files... any hints? they're not .txt files.
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Country: Antigua and Barbuda
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Catheter-OMO
Man 'O War
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 17:08:36
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I think .doc or .rtf
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Country: USA
| Posts: 2002 |
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BagLady-OMO
frequent visitor
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 21:09:55
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Word files are .doc, rft stands for rich text format. RFT files can usually be opened quite easily by other programs like Word Perfect without losing the formatting.
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Country: USA
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Bedpan-OMO
Too much coffee, Not a good thing.
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Posted - May 13 2006 : 21:11:51
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.doc for Word
.xls for Excel
.ppt for Powerpoint
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"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, bourbon in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!" |
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Country: USA
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Dementia-OMO
Freak of Internet Gaming
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Posted - May 14 2006 : 04:54:38
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thanks guys.. thats working.. what about Outlook file extensions?
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Country: Antigua and Barbuda
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Dementia-OMO
Freak of Internet Gaming
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Posted - May 14 2006 : 04:54:44
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thanks guys.. thats working.. what about Outlook file extensions?
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Country: Antigua and Barbuda
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Older- OMO
I got my bike at the ScooterStore
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Posted - May 14 2006 : 15:01:45
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the only stuff you need to find and copy to your new drive are the .pst files (your offline inbox/contacts).
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Country: USA
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Stingray
frequent visitor
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Posted - May 14 2006 : 18:50:02
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quote:
Originally posted by Dementia-OMO
thanks guys.. thats working.. what about Outlook file extensions?
Restoring your outlook files can be a pain. I believe they are actually hidden (inbox, draft, etc.) in a hidden file, so much easier in window 98. If you haven't figured it out, let me know, I'll write down the file path you need to copy and paste into your new file directory. I can also show the file path to your old address book/contacts if needed.
Sting
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FoggyOMO
frequent visitor
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Posted - May 14 2006 : 23:22:51
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Fresh XP install is way to go. Yes, it will take several hours to finish but your system will have only the stuff it really needs. You could try hooking up your old HD and see what happens but don't expect this to bake cake-walk. Problem with this is if in terms of hardware your new setup is considerably different to the old one you may end up with completelly non-responsive system. That would be the worst case scenario. Even if you manage to boot to the desktop you may have to re-activate your copy of Windows XP. As you may know XP will allow you x-number of hardware differencies with out requesting you to re-activate. In the best case scenarion all you have to do is to provide device drivers for new hardware when prompted. Btw, simple HDD to HDD copy does not work under XP especially with NTFS formatted drives.
Now, that new computer should have XP installed already and this makes things much easier. All you have to do is to reinstall all your applications and transfer user created documents and user related settings. It's not all that complicated as it may sound. Windows XP has Files and Settings Wizard designed to make the transition as simple as possible. As it is always the case with Miscrosoft products you may experience some problems so here are some links to interesting reading on the subject:
How To Use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard By Using the Windows XP CD-ROM
List of Programs Whose Settings Are Migrated When You Use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
How to Troubleshoot Issues with the User State Migration Tool and the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
Files and Settings Are Not Transferred When You Use the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard
If you decide to transfer your files manually you should copy following folders:
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Favorites
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Desktop
Depending on your speciffic setup there can be some other files or folders to copy over but these are the most important ones.
As for Outlook or Outlook Express I would suggest using built-in Import and Export feature rather than copying manually. Just start Outlook, click Files -> Import and Export, select Export to a file and click Next. Select Comma Separated Values (Windows) and click Next. From the list select a folder to export from and click Next. Type an appropriate name for the exported file and click Next. Finally, click Finish. Repeat this for all folders you want to export. By default they will be saved in My Documents folder with csv extension. Copy them to your new computer, start Outlook, click Files -> Import and Export, select Import from another program or file and click Next. Select Comma Separated Values (Windows) and click Next. Browse to location where you saved the files, check Options as appropriate and click Next. Select destination folder, click Next then Finish. Repeat this for the remaining files and you should be OK. Just make sure that source and destination match, ie. Contacts to Contacts, not Contacts to Calendar or anything like that.
Those interested in file type extensions should visit The File Extension Source with lots of info on the subject.
Some one stop me please 
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Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Need some computer help
